Vibratory conveyors may be used in a wide variety of industries for transportation of bulk materials or small parts. Additionally, some vibratory conveyors may be used to perform processing operations such as screening, transferring, heating, cooling, and other such processing operations on bulk materials such as food products, sand, gravel, foundry parts, or the like.
The inventors herein have identified some shortcomings in some vibratory conveyor applications, particularly those applications with relatively large conveyors utilizing relatively large vibratory drives. As one example, the motion of the drive mechanism may lead to an increased likelihood of degradation of the mass/spring systems used in the drive mechanism to generate the vibratory driving force. Replacing such components may present further complications. As an example, the mass/spring systems may be difficult to access and demand that a user to at least partially disassemble the conveyor system to replace the drive mechanism. This may be due to the assembly of previous drive mechanisms, wherein two or more of the springs, armature, drive weights, and electromagnetic coil are mounted via a shared piece. This in combination with a mounting of the drive mechanism to a conveyor pan and/or conveyor trough may result in accessing the various components of the drive mechanism difficult. For example, multiple people may be needed to lift the conveyor trough and/or pan to dissemble the drive mechanism, where dissembling the drive mechanism includes removing one or more mounts corresponding to two or more of the springs, armature, drive weights, and electromagnetic coil. This may reduce efficiency and increase costs.
In one example, the issues described above may be solved by a system for an electromagnetic drive mechanism comprising a first drive weight aligned with and in face-sharing contact with a second drive weight, a top clamp and a bottom clamp fixedly coupling the first and second drive weights together, springs arranged alongside the first and second drive weights, a tie plate coupling the springs to the first and second drive weights, and a coil slidably mounted on a coil housing, the coil being configured to oscillate between the coil housing and the first and second drive weights. In this way, the electromagnetic drive mechanism may allow a user to access each of the springs, first drive weight, second drive weight, and coil individually.
As one example, the first drive weight and the second drive weight are mounted in the electromagnetic drive mechanism via the top and bottom clamps and the tie plate. In one example, the tie plate is only coupled to one of the first drive weight or the second drive weight. The first drive weight and the second drive weight may be mounted such that they are immovable during an operation of the electromagnetic drive mechanism. The springs may be arranged on opposite longitudinal sides of each of the drive weights. By doing this, each of the first and second drive weights may be flanked by a group of springs. The springs may be segmented such that each springs of the group of springs operating independently. In one example, the springs are coupled to a mount angle, where there are two mount angles, each corresponding to a longitudinal side of the drive weights. The coil may be arranged on a lateral side of the drive weights where the coil may move to and away from the drive weights based on its energization. The coil housing may be mounted via a coil housing mount, where the coil housing mount may be coupled to one or more components of the conveyor. Additionally or alternatively, the mount angles may be coupled to one or more components of the conveyor. By doing this, a motion of the coil and one or more of the springs may be imparted onto the conveyor and translated into vibratory and/or linear motion of the conveyor. This in combination with the mounting of the springs, coil, and drive weights described above provides an easily accessible electromagnetic drive mechanism configured to drive a conveying system.
It should be understood that the summary above is provided to introduce in simplified form a selection of concepts that are further described in the detailed description. It is not meant to identify key or essential features of the claimed subject matter, the scope of which is defined uniquely by the claims that follow the detailed description. Furthermore, the claimed subject matter is not limited to implementations that solve any disadvantages noted above or in any part of this disclosure.
FIGS. 1-13 are drawn to scale, although other relative dimensions may be used.